Lemann, the dean emeritus of the Columbia School of Journalism, is something of an expert on standardized testing; his earlier book The Big Test covered the history of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now just called the SAT.

I am not recommending either book, but something Lemann wrote in his new one is worth discussing.

Much of Higher Admissions is about the supposed problem of not getting enough students from "underrepresented minority groups" into our elite colleges and universities. Like other "progressives," Lemann frets that the country is failing to place enough black, Hispanic, and others into places like Harvard and Yale, owing to the way that standardized tests are said to work against them. The existence of standardized test scores has enabled opponents of racial preferences to argue that some groups of students (especially Asians) are illegally discriminated against in the admission processes of our highly selective colleges. That argument persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that racial preferences were illegal in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.